The Costs of Generating Electricity 2025

In a fast-changing energy landscape, confronted by rising demand, price volatility and increasing capital intensity, providing reliable data on the costs of generating electricity to policymakers, experts and modellers is essential. Combining the deep techno-economic expertise of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), The Costs of Generating Electricity 2025 provides plant-level data on the levelised costs of electricity (LCOE) for 23 technologies in 21 countries. It includes data on a broad range of low carbon technologies, including small modular reactors (SMRs) and hydrogen turbines, as well as a number of fossil-fuel based technologies, both with and without carbon capture and storage (CCUS). Based on this data, it seems electricity systems are becoming increasingly low carbon and more diversified, but also more expensive. Only the long-term operation (LTO) of existing nuclear power plants, hydroelectricity, and – as long as their system costs are excluded – onshore wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) can provide electricity for less than USD 100 per MWh. While LCOE remains a vital building block of the information infrastructure on electricity systems, the data on costs and capacity factors also signal that they need to be complemented by system cost analysis in a specific country context to provide a reliable guide for decision making.